Millard Fillmore

1800-74
Fifty years vice-president Millard Fillmore of New York, was sworn in on the day after the sudden death of Zachary Taylor July 9, 1850. Although, unlike Taylor, he had a long standing political experience, in the usual way certainly would not president. Other than Taylor, he loyally worked at the White House with leaders of the Whig and has even internal and foreign policy successes. However, he did not have any chance at the end of term of office of the President once again offer its candidacy to the people. This he did several years later as a candidate hostile to foreign parties than proved its commitment to populist-demagogic way of thinking. Career Fillmore represents social mobility and almost unlimited chances to advance, which at that time with admiration or disdain, depending on the political point of view, is attributed to the United States.

The future president was born on January 7, 1800 in a log cabin in the district Keyyuga in the State of New York and was the son of a poor farmer. After an interrupted education tailor to have it, because that opens near the library, awakened a thirst for reading, which he retained for life. Self-study enabled him to 19 years to improve their education in school. There he met also with his wife, Abigail Powers, who was his teacher. The judge in Montwiе?е?, New York, and then in the office of counsel in Buffalo, he received a law degree and in 1823 was admitted to the practice of law. A year later, the politically more active and started to support John Quincy Adams as a candidate for president. From 1829 to 1831 he represented the "Party of the opponents of free masons" - anti-Masonic Party, the populist party of protest was short-lived - as a deputy in parliament Erie County New York. At that time, he and his family, already consisting of four, moved to Buffalo.

Fillmore had merit in the establishment Whig in western New York and in 1832 he was elected to Congress. In the House of Representatives supported the idea of Henry Clay on the economic consolidation of the nation through federal-state infrastructure and protectionist tariffs for local industry. As chairman of the powerful committee on ways and means of finding money "means the fee has formulated a law which, before entering into force in 1842, has twice been rejected by President John Tyler. In 1844 Fillmore unsuccessfully ran for the convention, the Whig candidate for the nomination for vice-president and in the same year lost, albeit with a slight lag, the election of the governor of New York, his opponent of Democrats. After the defeat, he at one time practiced law. From 1848 to 1849 years, Fillmore was Chairman of the Accounts and Auditing Chamber of the State of New York, where he first advocated the expansion of the Erie Canal.

. At its convention in Philadelphia in 1848 the Whigs nominated Fillmore in the second round with the support of Henry Clay's candidate for vice president next to General Zachary Taylor
. He fulfilled the task assigned to him to buy New York for Taylor. Although Fillmore maintained good relations with members of Congress, it almost completely ignored the administration Taylor. It has not asked for advice even if distribution of posts for his home state of New York.

. Unlike his predecessor, . Fillmore as president immediately made for the compromise proposed by Kleijnen, . with which the coalition Whigs and Democrats in Congress wanted to settle the dispute on distribution of slavery in the acquired in 1848 areas,
. He tirelessly tried to convince the Whigs of the northern states, which have resisted any expansion of the slave system. In his message to Congress in August 1850, he publicly once again with great energy, made for reconciliation between North and South, and in mid-September signed the legislation, which in aggregate amounted to "Compromise in 1850". In anti polozhnost Taylor Fillmore supported the principle of "popular sovereignty", which gave voters in the new states, not Congress in Washington to decide: to introduce or prohibit slavery.

. Not all Americans are relieved because the focus of the conflict in no way has not been eliminated, and the North complained that supporters of slavery had made too many concessions
. Especially one item package of compromises - the law of the capture of runaway slaves, the Fugitive Slave Act - provoked a storm of indignation, because he demanded that the slaves who escaped to the North were returned to their owners in the South. In addition, there were limited, and without that little rights granted to black defendants before the court. Opponents of slavery, who cooperated in the so-called Secret same Railway, since 1830 have enabled many tens of thousands of slaves escape to freedom from a safe haven to another, in the north, and from there to Canada. More, . than the whole abolitionist agitation for the abolition of slavery, . excited to the same brains was published in 1851, . first as a newspaper series, . novel Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin", . reason for the creation of which was the Fugitive Slave Act, and which sharply criticized slavery.,

. Fillmore replaced all obtained from Taylor's cabinet, as it implies that they set up the president against a compromise on the issue of slavery
. For example, he at once appointed Daniel Webster, who supported the agreement, its Minister of Foreign Affairs. Webster brought a great foreign policy experience, as already under Presidents Harrison and Tyler was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He and Fillmore seen in the concentration on foreign policy topics to distract from the extremely tense political situation.

. In 1848-49 years Europe was shaken by national and democratic revolution, which resulted in some countries temporarily to Republicanism
. In that many Americans saw parallels to his own history and ponder how can help the revolutionary movement. One faction in the Democratic Party, who called themselves "Young America" and demanded U.S. intervention in favor of the European revolutions. Although Fillmore and did not share such views, but his administration, at least rhetorically, supported the democratic outrage in the Old World.


. On the domestic political situation was related to foreign policy problem that has created for Fillmore Cuba
. Aware that within the union can no longer expand the slave system, some Southerners came to believe that we must wrest from the Spaniards slave fertile island in the Caribbean Sea. Fillmore, along with Webster, but after his death - the successor to Edward Everett blocked such plans with determination, as the fear of war with European powers and the fierce resistance of the opponents of slavery in the northern United States.

. To open the American trade routes to the Far East, 1852 Fillmore sent four military vessel, commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan with the instruction win for trade at least one Japanese port
. Perhaps due to the demonstration of military power its fleet, Perry succeeded in 1854 to sign a contract with the Kanagawa Prefecture, in which American trade were opened Japanese ports.

When the Whigs in 1852 spent their convention to nominate candidates for the next presidential election, Fillmore as a candidate was not even taken into account. It authorized the Fugitive Slave Act, and thus angered much of the northern wing of the party, which still had a strong influence. Presidential candidate of the Whigs was General Winfield Scott, the popular commander of the US-Mexican War, which, however, lost the election of Democrat Franklin Pierce. Preferred place of Scott Fillmore shows a loss of prestige and influence of the presidential institution. Leading party politics is often considered a candidate for the presidency only as a bait, with which they could buy votes and power in Congress. In a deeper sense of the weakness of the presidency was only a symptom of the progressive collapse of the party system and the crisis of the Union, which since the mid 50-ies of the XIX century came to a climax.

By political disappointment Fillmore joined the tragic personal loss. His wife, in March 1853 at the inauguration of the Pierce caught pneumonia and died soon after in Washington. On his return to Buffalo a year later, she died only daughter. Traveling Fillmore tried to find consolation and diversion. In 1855, he toured various countries and even had an audience with the Pope. Even in Europe, learned that in his absence he was elected as a candidate for president of the American party or party agnostics, a new anti-immigrant and nativist group. Fillmore received the nomination and in 1856 returned to the U.S.. In the elections, in which participated for the first time the newly formed Republican Party in the person of John Charles Fremont, he was able to record a significant asset in its 21% of the vote, but gained only Maryland. After this last exit on the national scene Fillmore actively involved in regional politics Buffalo. Although he supported the civil war northern states, getting louder and louder criticism of his moderate tone towards the South, and after the assassination of Lincoln, the mob attacked his house.

. March 8, 1874 13th president of the United States died of a brain haemorrhage in Buffalo.

. Fillmore was the last Whig president, the White House
. The highest point of his brief presidency was taking a "compromise in 1850, which was once again postponed" Hour of Truth "between North and South, as well as foreign-policy initiative, which he had seized, along with Daniel Webster. Institution of the presidency as such he was unable to give new impulses. But he was not any different from his predecessor Taylor, nor from his successor Pierce.

Source: Peoples.ru